


The Devil's Backbone

by Unknown



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Cannibalism, Canon Divergence - Red Wedding, Dark, Dark Ending, Multi, Open Ending, Zombies, ghost story, there is no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unknown/pseuds/Unknown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: </p><p>Jon Snow finds Lady Stoneheart and by all the gods he should kill the monster she has become. Should end her suffering and his. for she reminds him he did not save Robb. Too bad that underneath scarred skin and a mute mouth, her eyes were all he has left of Robb. And he'll take the indifference and hatred, because as much as he may fear the monster Lady Stark has become. Jon fears forgetting the color and shape of Robb's eyes even more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Backbone

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second time I've had to write it. It's for Tragic Thursday on tumblr for Jon/Robb Week which just ended uesterday so I'm gonna be posting a lot of the longer works I did for it on here. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I HAD TO DO RESEARCH FOR LADY STONEHEART SO NONE OF THIS IS PROBABLY ACCURATE. OKAY? AWESOME. LIKE I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF JON WOULD BE SO CLOSE TO WHERE STONEHEART AND BRIENNE ARE ANYWAY SO I MEAN OKAY IMMA JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW
> 
> this is sooooooo AU, i can't even.

Jon doesn’t expect the woman to scream “Commander!” as she hangs, but he fights his way to her and cuts her down. After that, it’s a battle for their lives as he and his men fight the oncoming horde. They succeed, to an extent, but Jon sees a dark cloak run into the forest and he chases after it.

He had come for Robb, is the thing, to help and to stand by him. Halfway into their journey, they had received news that the Freys had gotten there first. His brother – his sweet, brave brother and secret lover – was dead, along with his mother and their company.

Jon had grieved for days.

He pushes the dull sear of hurt away as he tackles the hooded figure facedown into the leaves of the forest floor. Jon pulls back to flip his prisoner over and lets out a yell. His head pounds and his heart throbs at the sight before him, because it doesn’t make sense. It is impossible. And yet.

Lady Catelyn snarls and spits at him, her scarred, pale face twisting into a mask of ire and hatred. He can’t think straight, so he yanks her to her feet and drags her to the camp he knows his men have made. Night steals in like a thief and Jon sneaks her into a tent, sets up a perimeter of men and orders them not to look inside.

He goes to find the woman.

She’s in a medicine tent being tended to, and Jon orders out the healer she is with so he can speak to her in private. She is weary and regards him with it heavy in her gaze, blonde hair dirty and short.

“What happened?” Jon asks. “Who are you and _what happened?_ ”

She tells him everything. She is Brienne of Tarth, a knight in her own right, captured and sentenced to death by a crazed, resurrected Lady Stark – Lady _Stoneheart_. She tells Jon of her mission and of Stonehearts mission. To wreak vengeance. To kill. To _destroy_. The beast is mad, full of rage, murderous and dangerous.

Jon leaves the tent with his head in a tizzy, with a heavy heart that is screaming that the one woman who hated him in life, and he supposes in death as well, lived while the one person he could ever love did not. Then again, he does not know if this is really life, for her, at least.

_And by all the gods he should kill the monster she has become. Should end her suffering and his. For she reminds him he did not save Robb. Too bad that underneath scarred skin and a mute mouth, her eyes are all he has left of Robb. And he'll take the indifference and hatred, because as much as he may fear the monster Lady Stark has become, Jon fears forgetting the color and shape of Robb's eyes even more._

* * *

_Once upon a time a bastard fell in love with lord and the lord loved him in return. They shared a father and they shared a love so strong that they risked their lives, stations and reputations to be with each other in every way a couple in love would be._

_But war was brewing, and a war-torn castle was no place for a bastard._

_So the bastard left to a wall of ice in the far north to take his vows and wear a black cloak for the rest of his days. The lord and his Lady Mother, who held the bastard in contempt and hatred, moved to the battle front._

_The lord became a king. The King became a war-leader._

_And one day, the Leader died._

_Yet, this is not the end of this story._

_Unbeknownst to the bastard, as he earned his keep and road toward his brother and lover to save his soul, the Lady Mother, who had also been slain in the attack by traitors, lay rotting in a river, dead and decomposing. A man came along, and after days of rotting, resurrected the woman in her half decayed state._

_The one person in the world who hated the bastard the most was back, crazed and with a vengeance. And the bastard was headed right into her clutches._

* * *

There is a scream in the night. The sound of flesh ripping, of blood spurting, of a man dying.

In the early morning light, one of Jon’s men is found with his throat ripped out and his heart carved from his chest. There are no sounds of an intruder, and the night guards had seen nothing. Jon gets a terrible, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He practically runs to the tent she is in and stands panting before the guards. They stare at him in confusion at the look of panic painting his face.

“Commander,” he is greeted. Jon ignores them and walks in.

Stoneheart is at the far end of the tent with her back turned toward him. Jon announces himself, but she doesn’t move. He walks forward slowly, his heart thundering in his chest and he feels sick, so sick, the feeling growing worse as he gets closer.

He’s close enough that he can reach forward and turn her by the shoulder and when he does so, he stumbles back in horror and surprise. Her ghostly pale face is smeared and flaky with crimson blood, staining down her neck and into the neck of her dress. She stares at him with unblinking eyes and when she opens her mouth in a growl, Jon can see a lump of flesh on her tongue, the blood stark against her teeth. He turns to where she is bound in irons, her chains nailed and tarred to the ground. Beside the post is a pile of bloody flesh. Jon looks back to her and she tilts her head like an animal, eyes bright with something inhuman.

She smiles.

Jon backs up on his hands and bottom so fast he stumbles out of the tent, his men letting out shouts of surprise and shock.

“Did she try and leave?” Jon asks immediately.

“No sir.”

“Are you _sure_?”

“We checked every hour, sir,” is the response. A pause. “May we ask why?”

“No,” Jon responds and accepts the hand up to stand. He takes a deep breath and looks inside again.

She is still smiling, the look sending shivers down Jon’s spine, making his hair stand on end, goose-bumps breaking out on his skin. Her teeth seem too big for her mouth, her skin folding in on her face, her muscles twitching. She is unnatural.

And the pile of flesh beside her is gone.

* * *

More bodies begin to pile up. More of Jon’s men are killed. The ring of guards around Stoneheart’s tent grows each day.

His men are terrified, the rumors of what follows them all chained up and bound in the tarp-covered caravan making the rounds. They refuse to leave the sight of each other in the nights, whether it’s to take a piss or grab a pint. They start to rebel, start to question Jon. Fear increases as respect for his position declines.

“Are you alright?” he asks one of his men after a particular bought of screaming. He’s new to their ranks and Jon knows he’s peaked into the caravan and tents against Jon’s explicit orders.

“No, actually, _sir_ ,” he responds. “Maybe we should do something about that _abomination_ and the rest of us would be able to _sleep_ at night.” He coughs. “She’s no White Walker, sir. She’s unnatural, she’s something else and she’s going to get us all _killed_.”

It’s a rude, overt action against Jon. And everyone knows it.

“ _I_ will decide when it’s time to do something about her, _do you understand_?” Jon yells, pulling his horse right up to the other man’s and yanking on the reigns. The animal pitches forward and the man goes flying to the ground. He groans. Everyone falls silent and Jon looks to them, face stony. “ _No one_ is to have contact with her, _am I clear_?” There are murmurs of assent, one or two insults, but those are smothered. “ _That_ is an _order_.”

Jon knows he won’t have any more trouble with his men. And he doesn’t.

What scares him, however, is the cold streak that has formed in his heart. He had felt nothing throwing that soldier to the ground.

* * *

_Once upon a time a bastard lost the love of his life. He mourned and ached for the man to be returned to him, for him to be resurrected and brought back into new life instead of the atrocity of his Lady Mother._

_There was a blackness growing in the bastard’s heart, turning him from hero to fallen. And it had sprung from loss and loneliness, from heartache and heartbreak. It was eating him alive and he was constantly reminded by the monster that plagued his camp, that he kept hidden from view as he slogged through marsh and field, making his way back north, to a throne he did not want, a destiny he no longer desired._

_He tried to escape, but found only a small relief when he blacked out in sleep after days on end spent awake and vigilant, only to find another dead body in his wake._

_He dreams, though not often and not always remembered, of blood and snow, of clear blue eyes staring up at him from underneath the ice._

**_Dead_ ** _._

* * *

Brienne does not agree with Jon’s decisions, however, and his orders do not work on her.

“Your men are dying,” she snaps. “You know it’s her. You know she’s killing them!”

“We don’t have any proof,” Jon insists. They don’t, but Jon knows that’s not why he’s let the monster live this long.

“We don’t need proof, Jon. Not with a monstrosity like that hanging around and men dropping like flies.” Jon does sometimes wonders why Brienne is still around, as they’re heading back to the Wall. He hasn’t asked. He doesn’t plan on it. “You need to _end_ her.”

“I _can’t_ kill her, Brienne,” he says softly.

“ _Why_ in the Seven Hells _not_!?” she begs.

Jon sighs heavily and looks off into the distance. “…it seems she has her eldest son’s eyes,” he says softly, absentmindedly.

Brienne lets out a strangled sound. “Then I shall do it myself!” she declares, unsheathing her sword.

“ _NO_!” Jon roars, unsheathing his and pressing the tip to her throat so fast she barely has time to react. He sees her swallow hard, but his heart is thumping and all he can think of is Robb, Robb, _Robb_ , only _Robb_ and his chest, his throat _, his face_.

With Catelyn’s eyes.

“Jon,” she says weakly.

“It’s Lord Commander to you,” he spits, and slams his sword back into his sheath. “You will _not_ touch her Lady Brienne, or you will once again find yourself in the hangman’s noose.” He turns away.

There is quiet sigh behind him. Then a hand is on his shoulder and Jon is turning his head to look at the soft look on Brienne’s face. It feels like pity, but he can’t bring himself to be mad at her for it.

“Jon,” she says, insists, despite his previous reprimand, “I promise you, that… _creature_ in there is _not_ Lady Catelyn Stark.” She pauses and lowers her voice. “Nor is she Robb Stark.”

Jon feels something inside of him tear into two and he wonders if it’s his heart. He flinches away from her and makes his way to the tent flap where he pauses.

“ _King_ Robb,” he chokes out. “He is _King Robb_ , King in the North, to you.” And then Jon is gone.

* * *

His men begin to desert, and Jon doesn’t waste his time, men or energies going after them to bring them to justice. Brienne leaves, unable to watch them all go to ruin, and Jon knows several of his men go off with her, as well as horses and provisions that follow them out.

He doesn’t react, just lets his men know that if he catches them, and he so rarely sleep at night, that he will kill them and throw them to the beast they fear so much. The number of men that leave dwindles in a week to practically zero. The threat of Lady Stoneheart has worked too well.

He uses it as often as necessary.

Jon has half the forces that came with him than when he started and he knows he will receive some looks of confusion when he informs other men in charge that there was no large battle, just men deserting as they made their way back.

He needs to do something about _her,_ he _knows_ he does but he can’t bring himself to.

The problem is, he dreams of Robb. He does, he dreams of him all the time. Robb’s body is there, prominent. His hands are almost real, his chest so tangible, his face perfectly there. There is only one thing Jon never sees of his brother in his dreams: _his eyes_.

No, he sees those during quiet times at twilight, at dusk and dawn when he goes to the tent in the center of camp that all of his men shun and scurry away from. Those are only seen pressed into the sunken, dead face of a rotting corpse that groans and moans, that hisses and stares at Jon with eyes full of so much hatred, that picks off his closest confidants in the camp slowly, one by one and make Jon shudder.

Jon finds, to his own, personal horror, that he is beginning to _hate_ those eyes.

* * *

_Once upon a time, a bastard found himself at the end of the world with a rag-tag group of men who followed him out of obligation and nothing more, and a the ghost of his lover screaming through a corpse’s eyes._

_It wasn’t the corpse itself that kept the bastard awake at night and it wasn’t the thought that his grip on his soldiers was weakening and might not last the return trip that gave him nightmares. It wasn’t the grief of his dead lover hanging around in the eaves of his camp and dreams – in fact, this brought him a type of comfort and peace he could not describe._

_No. It was none of this that man his heart pound and his skin break out into a cold sweat as they neared their destination._

_What kept him up at night, what plagued his dreams was this: that the beast he kept locked up and dragged with him across mountains and rivers could easily escape from it’s bonds and had done so many times to prove a point, to prove that it could. It could kill who it wanted, when it wanted, how it wanted, without being caught. It no longer had the wool over anyone’s eyes, but only because it wanted Jon to know how much power and influence it had._

_What kept the bastard up at night was that, despite all of this, the monstrosity_ stayed.

 _And he had no idea_ why _._

* * *

Jon feels it all come to a head one night. He leaves his tent and walks to _her_ , pushing through his ring of men that surround it. They part for him easily enough; he had beat a man last week for not moving quickly enough and then _suggesting_ that maybe Jon shouldn’t be conversing with _it_. Jon doesn’t feel anything when he thinks back on it, but as he walks into the tight, he does feel apprehensive.

She sits in the center of the tent, wrinkled, dead face tilted to the side, red mouth open as saliva drips from it in strings. She’s caked in dirt and blood and whatever else they have been dragging her through. In her hands is a rabbit. Jon doesn’t know how she got it, and he knows for a fact that his men would never set foot in the tent, not when half of them wouldn’t be guarding it if they had their way.

The animal is dead and she digs her pale fingers into its stomach, scooping out guts and bones, flinging them at Jon in anger. She can only move her hands so much, but Jon knows it’s a ruse, wonders why she doesn’t come in the night and sink her stained, rotted teeth into his throat and be done with it. At this point, it would be a mercy.

“Why are you still here?” he says, voice ringing clear and steady in the dark. Her head snaps up and a sting of intestine hangs out the side of her mouth. She tilts it like an animal. “I know you can leave. I know it’s been you doing all of the killing.” Jon swallows hard, gets his courage together. “ _What_ _do you want?_ ”

Her eyes widen, stretching the skin where it isn’t meant to. She drops the carcass of the rabbit, hands bloody and grotesque. And she extends one bony, crooked, blood-stained finger.

Right. At. Jon.

She _smiles_.

Jon walks stiffly out of the tent. He doesn’t sleep for days.

* * *

They’re a day from the Wall when one of his men wakes Jon in the night to inform him that Stoneheart is _gone_. They’d gone to check on her on their hour and she hadn’t been there. Jon sends out a party to search the snow covered woods around them, knows some men won’t be back due to the climate, to deserting and to Stoneheart herself. Jon, in the emptiness of the camp, goes back to her tent.

Her shackles are left there, whole and unbroken, still locked as though she had never been wearing them in the first place. There are claw-marks in the dirt but no impression of where her body had been resting against the wet grass they had cleared the snow from to lay down the tent. When he bends down to touch it, the soil is rock hard and frozen, and there is ice in the marks from her fingers.

There’s a rustling outside from where the tent and Jon stands, hand on his sword as he steps out to look. There is no one there. But something moves at the corner of his eye, something black and heavy like a winter cloak, and so he follows it, follows it down to his tent where he takes a deep breath and enters. The space is dark but for a candle on the makeshift desk in the center of the room. Jon looks about, for something, for anything. But there is nothing there. He goes to look in the corner by his bed roll and satchel.

When he turns around, Stoneheart is standing in the center of the tent.

“Why?” Jon asks, voice breaking. His men are far away, gone in the cold woods with some doomed never to return. Her hands are slick with blood, her mouth dripping with it. “Why are you doing this? Why are you forcing my hand?”

She takes a step closer, her mumblings reaching his ears with no discernable meaning. Her hands extend away from her sides, her arms spanning out.

“I wanted to be loved by you,” Jon says, hand on his sword, then dropping. White Walkers could not be killed by mere mortal weapons, why should this monster be? “I wanted to be accepted. You never let that happen.”

She moves closer, mouth moving in what could be words, but again, Jon can’t make any sense of it, any sense of the moaning and the anger. He can only see the light of fire in her eyes.

 _Fire_.

“You should know,” Jon says as he moves toward the desk. She watches him with her haunting eyes every step of the way, moving with him, getting closer to him. “You should know that I loved your son, I _loved_ Robb. I loved _all_ of your children but I… I was _in love_ with _him_.” She stops, cocks her head and Jon can reach the candle now. He grips and brings it up in front of him.

Stoneheart is suddenly so close that the light from the candle illuminates her face. And those eyes, oh Jon can see every bit of Robb in those eyes and he feels the tears slide down his cheeks. A cold, bloody finger traces them down his face as they fall.

“Robb is the only reason I haven’t killed you,” Jon says, his voice breaking. “I can’t… I _couldn’t_ let him go.” Her hand stops by his throat and Jon can feel the blood of one of his men drying, tightening on his skin. “But a good memory that I can only remember on my worst nights is better than whatever the fuck you’ve become.” And with that he thrusts the candle into her face.

The flame catches on her straw-like hair, her dry clothes. It burns and she lets out a scream of anguish, her hands clawing at his skin. But Jon whips out his dagger and slashes her throat. Sluggish, black blood drips from the wound and Stoneheart goes reeling backwards, arms pin-wheeling as she falls to the dirt beneath their feet. She struggles, rolling to the sides and catches the tent on fire, the flames jumping around and sticking to everything.

Jon runs. He doesn’t look back.

By the time his men are back, the camp is up in flames and Jon is standing a respectable distance away with the horses. They all look at each other and then one of them is pushed to the front. He walks over to Jon and clears his throat.

“Commander?” Jon turns to him, face blank. “Commander, your hands!” Jon looks down at his palms, singed with burnt flesh and boiling blood. He didn’t feel it, didn’t feel the pain at all. His men run to him, wrestle him down into the snow and thrust his brunt hands into the freezing ice.

Jon feels nothing.

He feels nothing at all.

* * *

_Once upon a time, a bastard lost his mind to a corpse that he found in the glen. It was slow, gradual and in the end, it destroyed him and who he thought he was. See, she had these eyes, these eyes that were the exact image of his dead lover’s eyes, as the corpse was his lover’s Lady Mother. And those eyes haunted him, made him keep her chained up in a tent far from him his own, just so he could see those eyes one last time._

_But love brings madness, and a monstrosity already breaking the bounds of reality and life brings nothing but darkness. She drove him to insanity, took his heart, then his dignity, then his pride. Then his mind._

_Once upon a time, the bastard burned his camp to the ground, the only way he knew how to get rid of undead evil._

_Once upon a time, he carried burning wood from the cook fire to burn every tent, char every pack, and singe every piece of ground she had ever walked on._

_Once upon a time, he roared in agony as he started a holocaust in her_ own _tent, the one he kept her a prisoner in, a prisoner of his shattered love for her long-dead son that was rotted away under soil and dust._

_Once upon a time, a man burned the soul out of himself in a frenzy, but it burnt out his decency and his empathy, and every thought of the ones he loved._

_Once upon a time, a bastard forgot what his lover’s eyes looked like…_

* * *

There is a smoldering, charred crater in the middle of the woods, the place bereft of snow. A silent horde of men emerge from the trees. One wipes his blade from where he had been slitting throats. Another wipes his dagger where he had been carving out hearts. Yet another adjusts the rope at his waist, where he had been lowering down remains through a hole in a tent.

They are surprised that the party had made it this far.

One man in particular calmly, quietly searches the ruins. He pauses when he uncovers something. Another man joins him.

“He thought she was worth it.”

“She is,” Thoros says. He bends down. He breathes.

Beneath him, a charred hand stirs.

* * *

_The End…?_

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I have no idea about Lady Stoneheart so I did some research and I am sorry if I butchered it all, especially the ending. I tried to leave it a bit vague because I don’t know the semantics. ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BROTHERHOOD WITHOUT BANNERS HELPING HER THE WHOLE TIME ANYWAY. 
> 
> Also, I don’t know if Jon and Brienne will ever meet or if she would recognize a man of the Night’s Watch, never mind a commander, and yes, yes, I made Jon the Commander la la la I DONT EVEN KNOW IS THE PROBLEM THESE DAYS. Anyway. 
> 
> If you think this is really terrible, I AM SO SORRY OKAY I AM SORRY
> 
> you can come yell at me at youngwolfandthebastard on tumblr.


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